Article excerpt

FIFTY years ago today, Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi led
the experiment that "fired up" the first nuclear reactor. He
demonstrated beyond doubt what many atomic physicists already
believed theoretically - humans can ignite and control the
sustained release of nuclear energy.

His experimental setup was crude. Precisely placed graphite
bricks piled 57 layers high and supported by a wooden frame
dominated a squash court beneath the University of Chicago's Stagg
Field football stadium. Fifty tons of uranium spheres were
distributed at precisely determined locations throughout the 400
tons of graphite in what Dr. Fermi and his colleagues called an
"atomic pile." Neutron-absorbing rods were inserted in this "pile"
to control the rate of nuclear-fission reactions. The rods - all
but one of which were operated by hand - were withdrawn to start
the reaction and pushed in to stop it.

This setup was not a prototype for a working nuclear reactor.
Yet it demonstrated basic principles that underlie the design of
the most advanced nuclear-power reactor today. Its successful
operation was one of those rare events that change the world.

As Fermi recalled 10 years later in an article in the Chicago
Sun-Times: "The event was not spectacular, no fuses burned, no
lights flashed. But to us it meant that release of atomic energy on
a large scale would be only a matter of time."

But the world at large did not learn of its new destiny for
several years. Secrecy cloaked the experiment as part of the United
States atomic-bomb program. Even authorized officials could learn
of its success only in guarded terms. Hence the now famous phone
call from Nobel laureate Arthur H. Compton, who headed the Chicago
phase of the program, to Harvard University chemist James B. Conant.

Dr. Compton reported, "The Italian navigator has landed in the
New World." Dr. Conant asked, "How were the natives?" "Very
friendly," Compton replied.

Like the arrival of the geographical Italian navigator Columbus
500 years ago, this scientific landfall has turned out to be a
mixed blessing. Fermi spoke for many of his fellow atomic
scientists when he noted in his Chicago Sun-Times article, "We
hoped that perhaps the building of power plants, production of
radioactive elements for science and medicine would become the
paramount objects." But, given the cold-war hostilities of that
time, he sadly acknowledged that "fabrication of weapons still is
and must be the primary concern."

In spite of the military emphasis of the early atomic age, many
nuclear experts also talked optimistically of the potential
benefits of what they called "the peaceful atom." They foresaw an
era of abundant energy. But Conant warned of the atom's darker side.

He told the American Chemical Society's 1951 diamond jubilee
dinner: "I see ... neither an atomic holocaust nor the golden-age
abundance of the atomic age. On the contrary, I see worried
humanity endeavoring by one political device or another to find a
way out of the atomic age." He added that holocaust would be
avoided "only by the narrowest of margins.... And only because ...
the military advisers could not guarantee ultimate success."

Looking back over the first half century of this atomic age in
which he has played a leading role, nuclear chemist and Nobel
laureate Glenn Seaborg of the University of California at Berkeley
concludes that "probably, on the whole, it's been for the good of
mankind."

Conant's prophecy is being fulfilled as the nuclear powers work
together to reduce their weapons stockpiles. Plenty of those
weapons still exist. But efforts to control them now proceed in an
international climate in which the United States is buying
fissionable material from Russian warheads to be diluted and burned
in nuclear-power plants. …